SimGuruGraham on The Sims 3 – Part 3

He has replied for a third time, and other SimGuru’s have been posting too. I’ve even gave my two cents somewhere in the forums, and most of you can probably predict what I said ðŸ˜‰

I get the sense that people think I would slam EA if I got the opportunity to, but as a whole EA is quite supportive of The Sims. The Sims Studio has been a real highlight for EA over the years, and with that comes more trust from executives and upper management. Nobody here is forced to work extended hours for weeks on end, in fact I don’t recall anyone ever telling me that I had to work late or come in on a weekend. Generally speaking people are very self sufficient here. They know what work they’re responsible for and when they need to get it done by, and they’re trusted to manage their time in the way that works best for them. SimGuruMeatball mentioned how there are hundreds of people across different teams within The Sims Studio. I don’t have any hard numbers in front of me, but I’d say that the amount of people actively working on The Sims 3 at the moment is about the same if not more than what we had from the time we started making expansions with World Adventures. Regarding customer service, I’ve seen a couple of notes from them before that made me shake my head, but I think it’s really impressive that at pretty much any time you can almost instantly be speaking with a live person who will try and help you. I don’t know of any other company in the industry that provides that service for comparable products. I’m sure they’ll continue to improve through additional training and knowledge transfers with dev teams.

I’ll actually share a personal anecdote about myself and EA that maybe people will appreciate and get a laugh out of. When I was finishing college, I’d already known for years that I wanted to work in the game industry as it has always been a passion of mine. With EA being such a large publisher and having a presence in Florida which is where I was at the time, it had long been my assumption that I would probably get my first job in the industry at EA. The problem was, this was a period of time when I really disliked EA; I disagreed with some of their business practices and didn’t care for their titles that were being released. I saw EA as a stepping stone for my career, and that’s something I heard from other people as well at the time. EA would snatch people up out of college, and I could spend a few years here building my resume, then move on to where I really wanted to be.

Well… that didn’t happen. I spent my first couple of years in the industry working for THQ; and when it came time for me to go job hunting again due to unforeseen circumstances, my perception of EA had already started to change. I didn’t know a lot about how they operated internally, but as a gamer I saw how they were investing in new IP, putting a much greater emphasis on quality, and I’d heard about how they were improving the work/live balance for their employees. It was really encouraging, and these were all things spearheaded by our current CEO, John Riccitiello. So I ended up getting hired here, and it has been a fantastic experience. During my time here I’ve been presented numerous opportunities for career growth, I constantly feel challenged and engaged by the work that I’m doing, and I take pride in both The Sims and many of the other games that EA puts out each year.

So the funny part is, I told everything I just mentioned to John Riccitiello’s face. At our company holiday party two years ago, he came over to me and asked if I was enjoying myself, and we just struck up a conversation where I started spilling all of thisÂ Thankfully he didn’t fire me on the spot when I told him there was awhile when I boycotted purchasing anything from EAÂ I have a ton of respect for what he’s done to turn EA around since those days.

If anything, I think EA makes a lot of forward thinking moves in how our products impact consumers, and our approach to game development. People may question some of those things in the present, but I believe it will be looked back on favorably years down the road as they become standards in the industry.

Anavastia wrote:
If I remember they are working on something for the vampires and maybe celebrity take overs that occur in town.Â I know what was mentioned somewhere in this thread.

I hope you won’t mind me using your post Anavastia, but this is an example of why we don’t typically talk about work going into upcoming patches. Earlier in the thread I mentioned how I keep my own list of issues that I see the community talking about… not just technical problems, but design tweaks that would improve the game. I gave the celebrity system and vampires as an example of the type of stuff I track, and talk about how I want to try and get those things changed. Unfortunately when we say stuff like that though, too often the message gets changed as it’s discussed. The goal posts get moved from being something we acknowledge is important to the community, to a misunderstanding that it’s being actively worked on. Then the next update comes out and people are upset because they remember hearing about it in some context, and they feel like they were lied to when it isn’t changed. That isn’t anyone’s fault, it’s just the nature of the internet when information is passed second hand through lots of different people. It’s why we feel like we have to be careful in what we say, because we don’t want to set unrealistic expectations for things we can’t promise will happen. I’ll keep pushing for us to make updates to those sorts of things, but I can’t guarantee you’ll get them until that work is actually scheduled and completed.

Marzupial wrote:
Somthing doesn’t ad up here:

In your first post, you talked about your development responsibilies and then a bit further, you say “I’m not a programmer, so I don’t know what might be going wrong in the code”. In your post we’re discussing, you said “I don’t want anyone to think I’m making light of the amazing work that modders in the community do. I have a long history of working on mods for popular games as well; and I know how much hard work people pour into them for nothing in return other than the enjoyment of seeing others use it. I started out scripting my own mods for the original Rainbow Six, adding new competitive multiplayer modes for the game. I’ve worked on all sorts of mod teams for first person shooters over the years as a level designer; most notably I was part of the original Counter-Strike team before it was purchased and released commercially by Valve. A healthy mod community is not only great for players; I think it’s great for us as a business as well.”

That tells me that you seen to have a lot of experience with development and programming. Can you explain this to me because the statements above seem (keyword here: seem) contradictory.

As for modders, they have great life and career reponsibilities of their own: They perhaps study, have full time jobs, families… It’s not their responsibility to fix errors in the code. It’s EA’s! If I want a mod from a third party, it’s not so it fixes my game: I only seek those mods to give a whole new dimension to my game play. I hope EA has the guts to give the best modders out there some kind of perk! As it is, the modders are fixing The Sims 3 bugs for free on top of greatly enhancing the game replay value!

Trust me, I couldn’t write code to save my lifeÂ A lot of the work I did in the mod scene over the years was as a level designer. It’s work along the same line of someone downloading Create a World for The Sims 3 and creating brand new environments to play in. I’d typically work within a mod team – a group of people working towards a common design goal, and some of them would be programmers. The one game play mod I completed on my own for Rainbow Six is what I would call scripting, but not in the modern programming sense that people refer to scripting as. It involved tweaking a lot of values in .ini files to change rules, win conditions, object locations, etc. As for your other point, I completely agree with you that the mod community shouldn’t feel the need to spend their time correcting any issues with the game. I hope that as we continue to update the game, that people will feel less of a need to get mods that help them with issues they may have, and can concentrate on the creative content that mod communities are always so great at making.

Anyway, a few more random thoughts… a high-five for Pepperbutt; I was born and raised in Miami as wellÂ Â I haven’t been back since Hurricane Andrew slammed through our neighborhood, but it’ll always be home. Unfortunately (and I saw Maripy mention it as well), I don’t speak a lick of Spanish. Maripy; glad to hear you enjoy the humor in the past games. Trying to find the right balance between humor and simulation can be a bit tricky at times. That’s generally more of a design thing, but whenever I’m writing text for the game I generally try to either be clever or be funny. Who knows, maybe it’s just funny to meÂ Do people out there actually take the time to read stuff like the object descriptions in the catalog?

19 Comments

Yes, Graham, some of Sims 3 players Do know how to read, and you should be appalled at the misspellings within the game itself. You seem to be under the impression that we’re all a bunch of 12 years olds. And stop pandering, you’re coming off like a wuss. Your attempt at damage control is amusing, however.

If this is all true than why is Sims 3 so lifeless and crappy compared to Sims 2? And I am going to be honest, most of the people I know who played the Sims 2 (mostly females) no longer play the Sims 3 – either because they never brought it or it was boring when they did. Sims 3 may have a large playing community but do they have any way of showing how many of those players played the Sims 2?

I think that’s why there is a problem among other things – older fans expect improvement upon the sims that just isn’t present in the Sims 2

I wish they could have taken Sims 2 and update the engine, graphics, and CAS. I guess a lot of people would have been mad, maybe even me, but we would have a perfect game. I am not in a reminincing fog. I play Sims 2 every day and I can’t wait until break to be able to fire it up (which is a committment in itself).

Been a fan for a long time of the sims series, this slowed down with the Sims 3 as the damn game just has issues. I do think the sims team have their hearts in the right place and have no doubts that for the most part EA is supportive but the many issues make this game hard for me to keep playing. Also Deedee, I understand your angry but at no point did Graham say that ‘we’ can’t read… your comment just comes across spiteful and obnoxious. I think his ‘attempt’ at damage control is great, personal and something much better than an official statement that doesn’t hold much behind it. Glad this has been done, hopefully a better future awaits the game. ðŸ˜‰

Is this person trying to show that EA has a heart?
I don’t get why all of the sudden this people want to explain themselves and and make us feel that we are obtuse and bad fans.
Too many (and late) explanations make them look like desperate.

The fact that only one person is speaking also doesn’t help. It’s like one source of light in the gloom – it helps but it doesn’t reveal fully what is REALLY going on. Maybe if they had many people from different aspects of the developers / publishers it would seem less hollow

The product speaks for itself, and in its current state, it’s broken and disjointed. Features from different expansion packs do not gel together like they have in the past (e.g. selling cars from NL in OFB!). Need I mention the bugs? The team may have their hearts in the right place, but the end product is still crappy.

Graham, fixing the bugs is not a luxury. It’s a must. He needs to understand this. It’s not “we’re going to try to fix this in between this and in between that”. That’s not how it works if you want to improve customer experience. You prioritize and put the bug fixing at the top of the list. If this means you have to stop making the over-sugary Katy Perry Sweet Treats stuff pack, then it means you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do to get the game working again. Not spend most of your time making random stuff packs while *trying* to fix the bugs you created here and there.

Then there are the gameplay design issues. The foundation of the gameplay is shaky with celebrities infestations and the fact that there really is just nothing to do outside of rabbit holes, empty clubs, and useless parks. The shopping and restaurants were a HUGE part to the game and you underestimated their importance when you made those rabbit holes.

Graham seems like a great guy, but what really matters is the end result… and it ain’t pretty. Not to mention the total lack of communication up until now didn’t help matters much!

I really feel the gurus are getting flack for EA being named worst company. And reading from other forums is not just Sims 3, I know a lot of people are upset over Mass Effect 3, I don’t play it but I have read a lot of negative stuff about it. What makes me the most upset is the celebrity endorsement. I mean is every pack from now on going to have Katy Pery’s name on it with an extra $10 to pay to KP??? Yes there are a LOT of flaws with sims 3 but I think Ghrams attempts are just making things worse.

Every time I see a live chat will be a good thing I think but again have cheated another player with silly things and objects that do not enrich the game but instead take up space on the pc … when will you hear the fans calling for a pack of expancion of weathers … or expansion of college … or open business that would be the most requested by fans …. EA does not listen but only interested in making money only will the SimGuruGraham I answered my comment …

“The product speaks for itself, and in its current state, itâ€™s broken and disjointed. Features from different expansion packs do not gel together like they have in the past (e.g. selling cars from NL in OFB!).”

@Funnykid you hit the nail on the head when I read our sims couldn’t go overseas(China France etc) to do world tour type shows in Showtime not even if rabbit form I was thinking about what a lost opportunity that was and made me even question what the point of WA was we would have been better off with a vacation pack rather than a tomb raiding sim imo.

Also as cool as the open world has been EA/Maxis needs to take it back to the drawing board for Sim 4 because we lost open restaurants and stores the awesomeness that was subhoods so in turn our neighborhoods are forced to be smaller thanks to routing issue and lack of space

@ spon1Player: I know, right? It was such a huge letdown. But again AMB was the result of tons of fans wanting to go to work with their sims…So blame the fans first, then sim studio for mis interpreting a half baked ill formed idea to begin with.
It goes back to the thing all most fans wanted was a flasher/better graphics version of sims 2. that’s all. with more content, not the gb size, but actual useful things.

@ spon1Player: I know, right? It was such a huge letdown. But again AMB was the result of tons of fans wanting to go to work with their simsâ€¦So blame the fans first, then sim studio for mis interpreting a half baked ill formed idea to begin with.
It goes back to the thing all most fans wanted was a flasher/better graphics version of sims 2. thatâ€™s all. with more content, not the gb size, but actual useful things.

I wish they made jobs more fun to be honest. I used to play The Sims Online, they had some really addictive jobs – 10 minutes a go. Robot Factory, Cafe, DJ or Dancer – they were VERY interactive too. So I was very annoyed when Ambitions were not that.. amazing.